Electrical vehicles represent a popular trend for transporting human passengers and cargo. For example, electric cars have several benefits over conventional internal combustion engine automobiles, including a significant reduction of local air pollution, especially in cities, as they do not emit harmful tailpipe pollutants such as particulates (soot), volatile organic compounds, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead, and various oxides of nitrogen. An electric car is propelled by one or more electric motors, using electrical energy stored in rechargeable batteries or another energy storage device. Electric motors give electric cars instant torque, creating strong and smooth acceleration. However, it remains a challenge to improve the range or endurance of an electric car.
People have also attempted to use smaller electrical aircraft to rapidly deliver parcels and packages to millions of customer's households. The most promising aircraft is Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which are unpiloted aircraft that are either controlled remotely or flown autonomously along pre-programmed flight plans. UAVs are commonly categorized based on their design and performance specifications spanning a range from miniature low altitude aircraft through large High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) vehicles. Small low altitude UAVs (AKA drones) is preferred for civil delivery system. However, there are still some challenges posed in the design, manufacturing, and operation of the UAVs. One of such challenges is the flight endurance of UAVs. In aviation, endurance is the maximum length of time that an aircraft can spend in cruising flight. Endurance is different from range, which is a measure of distance flown. For example, a typical sailplane exhibits high endurance characteristics but poor range characteristics.
The current lithium-ion batteries, due to smaller size and relatively high energy density, are not only widely used in mobile devices such as mobile phones, and laptops as a power sources, but also used in the fields of electric vehicles (EV), energy storage and the like. However, the battery performance for EV and electric aircraft, especially for UAVs, cannot meet the requirements for extended time of endurance. Existing drones or UAVs have to be substantially modified in terms of design and manufacturing process. The major methods to improve the endurance are: 1) to develop new battery technology in order to improve energy storage capacity of the battery; 2) to reduce the weight of UAV or drones.
Advantageously, the present invention meets the aforementioned challenges, and provides a solution to overcome the problems.